It was unclear how the local government would enforce the rule, and the announcement could be as much about playing to the country’s Buddhist majority as about actual policy....

A spokesman for Rakhine State, Win Myaing, said the new program was meant to stem rapid population growth in the Muslim community, which a government-appointed commission identified as one of the causes of the sectarian violence.

Although Muslims are the majority in the two townships in which the new policy applies, they account for only about 4 percent of Myanmar’s roughly 60 million people....

Given that the Muslim locals in Bangladesh have filled the country to overflowing has caused this influx of colonists into Burma. The Burmese government is dumb, but not stupid. They can see the Muslim colonist problems in Thailand and in Europe. They are full spectrum xenophobes with an anti-Muslim colonist kicker.

What seems significant to me is that some people feel the need to call Burma Myanmar even though they do not treat other countries the same way. Why a country with a bad govt gets what seems to be special respect, I don't know.

There are SO many countries that call themselves by different names than the names we use.

Religious persecution isn't about removing a religious group, but keeping that religious group in its place.Myanmar is worried about an increasing Islamic presence. The reason for this fear is the other conflicts that Muslims are engaged in around the world. How do you avoid a conflict like this? By keeping Muslims as a small minority.Will it work? Probably not. How do you stop women from giving birth to that 3rd child? Do they have the guts to force abortions? Do they have the guts to put down the protests and riots and blockades that will arise because of this? If they do (as did China), then prepare for a Muslim brain drain from Myanmar.

Nonapod said... "Is religious persecution still effective? Has it ever been truly effective? Has a religion ever been completely removed due state sponsored to suppression and persecution?"

Yes and hell yes.

Saudi Arabia is judenfrei and almost Christian free.

Religious persecution has been very effective for Islam. Muslims believe in religious freedom while they are a small minority. As soon as they reach a critical mass, about 10% religious liberty disappears.

Why a country with a bad govt gets what seems to be special respect, I don't know.

Didn't it (Burma, aka Myanmar) begin as a way of pointing out that the US didn't officially recognize the Myanmar government? But switching it to Myanmar formerly known as Burma was the Obama administration saying that now we do.

" ...in 1647, Massachusetts Bay banned Jesuit priests from the colony on penalty of death. The English Puritans who settled the colony feared the Jesuits for several reasons. First, simply because they were Catholic. "

"According to a 1689 report, there was not a single "Papist" living in New England. But in the early 1700s, stories began circulating that there were "a considerable number" of Catholics in the colonial capital. During the winter of 1732 a newspaper reported that an Irish priest had celebrated Mass "for some of his own nation" on St. Patrick's Day. Bostonians were alarmed enough for the governor to order the sheriff and constables to break into homes and shops and arrest any "Popish Priest and other Papists of his Faith and Persuasion." While English and French soldiers were fighting in what came to be called the French and Indian War, authorities in Boston arrested 100 French Catholics "to prevent any danger the town may be in."

This is why Muslims are actually weak. Nowhere can Muslims protect themselves. Even in the heart of the old Caliphates, Damascus and Baghdad, foreigners and infidels can come and go as they please. Despite Al Jazeera hyperventilating about the plight of the Rohingya in Burma, no Muslim country can do anything for them. Only the United States or China offer any hope, and how humiliating is that? It's the same situation as Bosnia and Kosovo last century, where it took the most hated Western country to save Muslims from extermination at the hands of the weakest country in Europe.

Islam is weak. That's why there's so much violence and paranoia from Egypt to Pakistan. The Iranian quest for a bomb is an attempt to finally stop the Muslim world from being the doormat of the planet. And, this being a tragedy, that quest will only bring down more punishment. A hundred atomic weapons don't seem to have made Pakistan any more secure.

It's time to see the Islamic religion for what it is, a doomed social system incompatible with the modern and post-modern world. The religion itself, as an individual belief system, may survive, but not as a complete society.

What the War on Terror is about (and it's still on, whatever the President says) is containing the consequences of the Islamic collapse. No Muslim country can oppose the West for long without being destroyed, nor can they even stand against the historical forces tearing them apart.

Gee, I don't know why New Englanders might have been nervous about the Catholics. "The Huguenots were French Protestants. The tide of the Reformation reached France early in the sixteenth century and was part of the religious and political fomentation of the times. It was quickly embraced by members of the nobility, by the intellectual elite, and by professionals in trades, medicine, and crafts. It was a respectable movement involving the most responsible and accomplished people of France. It signified their desire for greater freedom religiously and politically. The names of Huguenot leaders at that time included the royal houses of Navarre, Valois, and Condé; Admiral Coligny, and hundreds of other officers in the military. Marguerite d'Angoulême (pictured right), whom scholars have called "the first modern woman," was an early supporter of reform in the Catholic Church. She influenced her brother, Francis I, to be lenient with the Huguenots.

The Huguenot Church grew rapidly. At its first synod in 1559, fifteen churches were represented. Over two thousand churches sent representatives to the synod in 1561. In the beginning, the Huguenots were greatly favored by Francis I because of their stature and their abilities as well as their economic contribution to the country's finances. However, ninety percent of France was Roman Catholic, and the Catholic Church was determined to remain the controlling power. The Huguenots alternated between high favor and outrageous persecution. Inevitably, there were clashes between Roman Catholics and Huguenots, many erupting into the shedding of blood. During the 1560s, the clashes worsened. Finally, Catherine de' Medici and the Guise factions, together representing the Crown and the Church, organized a deadly act. Thousands of Huguenots were in Paris celebrating the marriage of Henry of Navarre to Marguerite de Valois on Saint Bartholomew's Day, August 24, 1572. On that day, soldiers and organized mobs fell upon the Huguenots, and thousands of them were slaughtered. Gaspard de Coligny was among the first to fall at the hands of a servant of the Duke de Guise and was chopped to pieces. Pope Gregory XIII had a medal struck off in honor of the event and sent to Catherine and all Catholic prelates.

Civil wars followed. On March 4, 1590, Prince Henry of Navarre led Huguenot forces against the Catholic League at the Battle of Ivry (pictured right) in Normandy, resulting in a decisive victory. Then, on April 13, 1598, as the newly crowned Henry IV, he issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted to the Huguenots toleration and liberty to worship in their own way. For a time, at least, there was more freedom for the Huguenots. However, about one hundred years later, on October 18, 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. Practice of the "heretical" religion was forbidden. Huguenots were ordered to renounce their faith and join the Catholic Church. They were denied exit from France under pain of death. And, Louis XIV hired 300,000 troops to hunt the heretics down and confiscate their property. This revocation caused France to lose half a million of its best citizens. It was not until November 28, 1787, after the United States of America had gained its independence from England, that the Marquis de Lafayette, who was impressed by the fact that so many of the American leaders were of Huguenot descent, persuaded Louis XVI and the French Council to adopt an Edict of Toleration guaranteeing religious freedom to all in France.

During the entire period between the early part of the sixteenth century to 1787, thousands of Huguenots left their homes in France for other countries because of recurring waves of persecution. As Esther Forbes, wrote in Paul Revere and the World He Lived In (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942):

'France had opened her own veins and spilt her best blood when she drained herself of her Huguenots, and everywhere, in every country that would receive them, this amazing strain acted as a yeast.'"